To Fellow Travellers in Greece 


’T WAS in the piping time of peace   
We trod the sacred soil of Greece,   
Nor thought, where the Ilissus runs,   
Of Teuton craft or Teuton guns;   

Nor dreamt that, ere the year was spent,           
Their iron challenge insolent   
Would round the world’s horizons pour,   
From Europe to the Australian shore.   

The tides of war had ebb’d away   
From Trachis and Thermopylæ,           
Long centuries had come and gone   
Since that fierce day at Marathon;   

Freedom was firmly based, and we   
Wall’d by our own encircling sea;   
The ancient passions dead, and men           
Battl’d with ledger and with pen.   

So seem’d it, but to them alone   
The wisdom of the gods is known;   
Lest freedom’s price decline, from far   
Zeus hurl’d the thunderbolt of war.           

And so once more the Persian steel   
The armies of the Greeks must feel,   
And once again a Xerxes know   
The virtue of a Spartan foe.   

Thus may the cloudy fates unroll’d           
Retrace the starry circles old,   
And the recurrent heavens decree   
A Periclean dynasty.


W. Macneile Dixon